Investing in the productive economy hasn't yielded a positive return for the last ten years, and yes, it's fair to expect the market to compensate you for deferring consumption because society is decidedly not indifferent between whether you consume resources now or later. It would be one thing if investment opportunities did this while cash could not, but that is not where we are today. (It's fine if you want to toss out the concept of deservingness [though less so if you want to paint me as a racist], but you can't get around how rewarded behavior will tend to happen more and less rewarded behavior, less. So unless you want all behavior to shift toward consuming all real resources immediately, including "seed corn", you have just as much an interest in seeing an economy strike a balance between present an future consumption, no matter how much you hate rich people or deem them racist.) And getting people to invest in productive enterprises under threat of their money withering away is pure Machiavellianism, not a system you'd come up with after careful consideration of how to best reach a Pareto optimum. It would be one thing if the market did compensate people for deferral of consumption (through positive real after-tax interest rates), in a magnitude that reflects society's current willingness to move their purchases forward, but "noble" (and very non-secret, conspiracy-theory-not-required) manipulations of financial markets have prevented this from happening. It is not an obviously superior economic system when people have to make haphazard, ill-considered loans just to have a chance at preserving purchasing power. And finally, an inflationary currency doesn't solve the problem of investors requiring positive real expected return; it just rearranges the problem. Nor is it some kind of boon to have exporters that are advantaged by cheap local currency. If that's so great, why not debase the currency to nothing? We have a name for working for others for nothi

To expand, whenever you think of "dollar debasement", ask yourself "relative to what?" * Gold: Exactly how important is gold to everyday commerce and life? * Oil: Check the oil price in other currencies to get an idea of how much of the change is because of the value of the dollar vs. the supply of and demand for oil. * Other commodities: see "oil". If the commodities are produced in the USA (or China, as long as they peg their currency, the RMB, to the USD), then fluctuations in the value of the dollar can't affect their prices. (Edit: Yes, everything needs oil, and almost everything has at least some "foreign" component, so there can be second-order effects). * Other currencies: If capital flows in and out of the subject countries are relatively free, then exchange rate changes mean something real about the respective economies. (China restricts capital flows and buys a shitload of USD, that's how they can keep the exchange rate constant. It also means domestically they have ugly inflation they can't do anything about).